Professor Hongyuan Robert Yang obtained his Bachelor of Medicine degree from Peking University (Beijing, China) in 1993; and his Ph.D. from Columbia University (New York, USA) in 1998. Soon after, he started his own laboratory as a lecturer at the Department of Biochemistry, National University of Singapore where he was promoted to associate professor with tenure. He joined the University of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia) as a senior lecturer in 2007, and became a professor at the end of 2012. He was an Australian Research Council Future Fellow from 2010 to 2013, and he is currently a Senior Research Fellow of the National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia. He recently joined the University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston, USA. His work focuses on lipid storage and trafficking in eukaryotic cells and animals. He has published over 70 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. His group identified a number of gene products that regulate the growth of lipid droplets. One of those, SEIPIN, is also essential for adipogenesis. His group characterized SEIPIN using a number of model systems including yeast and mice, and discovered a role for SEIPIN in phospholipid metabolism. These findings may lead to novel therapeutic strategies against obesity and congenital generalized lipodystrophy. His group also identified and characterized a number of proteins that regulate cellular cholesterol trafficking and homeostasis.